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Author Archives: Mark Sample

February 16, 2012, 11:00 am

Make Your Own Zotero WebDav Server and Access Your Zotero Attachments Anywhere

By Mark Sample

2114683166_45ce6d7e43_mI’ve written about many developments in the Zotero ecosystem recently, but this is definitely the most hackish. How about setting up your own Zotero server, where you can access your Zotero references, PDF attachments, and even web snapshots from any browser on any computer. And how about being able to run this server on almost any web hosting service, including free ones?

That’s exactly what Christian Holz’s phpZoteroWebDAV 2.0 does. Holz’s program creates a PHP-based WebDav server, to which you can sync your Zotero attachments (e.g. PDFs associated with citations and snapshots of your Zoteroed pages). The program then uses Zotero’s API to pull in the citations themselves from your Zotero library, allowing you to view, browse, and search virtually every element of your Zotero library from your own server.

Why might you want to do this?

One of Zotero’s powerful features is it…

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February 9, 2012, 3:00 pm

Zotero Roundup: Zotero 3.0 and ZotPad for the iPad

By Mark Sample

The ZotPad Zotero App for the iPadThe research and reference manager Zotero is one of our favorite tools at ProfHacker, and there have been several recent developments worth mentioning to our readers.

Most notably, the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has officially released Zotero 3.0. I reviewed a beta version of this so-called standalone Zotero back in August. Like the beta version, this latest release can run outside a browser. You can use connector plugins to add Zotero functionality to Chrome and Safari. (The original Firefox extension that started it all has also been updated to 3.0 and is as reliable as ever.) Aside from being browser-independent, two long awaited features of Zotero 3.0 include duplicate detection and a totally revamped, sleek new Microsoft Word and OpenOffice add-in.

Also, independent developer Mikko Rönkkö has released the first ever Zotero client for the iPad, called

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February 2, 2012, 11:00 am

Wunderlist To-Do Manager

By Mark Sample

Photo Jan 26, 10 35 29 PMI am not a fan of Getting Things Done.

I mean Getting Things Done, as in GTD, David Allen’s organizational and productivity method, though I also balk at just plain old getting things done. To wit, rather than join the Cult of Inbox Zero, I simply asked my campus IT to increase the size of my inbox by a gig.

Still, there are times when I need to-do lists. Sometimes big long multi-step lists focused on a single goal (say, taking care of the Kafkaesque-style barrage of forms, receipts, and signatures needed to get reimbursement for travel expenses). And sometimes merely a one-item list reminding me to pick up something at the grocery store (say, pickles. (Don’t Ask.))

For a while I’ve relied on Google Tasks, which I had high hopes for ever since Google opened its API. But frankly, Google Tasks stinks. Or at least the Android and iOS apps that use the Google Tasks API stink….

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January 19, 2012, 11:00 am

The Cure for Thinking is Work

By Mark Sample

Men at Work SignIf you’re a scholar or student in the humanities and you’re having trouble making progress on that latest article or essay you’re supposed to write, chances are that you’re thinking too hard.

What? Thinking too hard?

Yes, thinking too hard. Thinking is the bane of our existence in the humanities, rooted in Romantic visions of the lone and misunderstood genius, conjuring thoughts of philosophical profundity out of nothingness. If that’s how scholarly discourse truly proceeded, we’d have thousands of awe-inspiring, world-rocking treatises at the end of every finals week or whenever a scholar was faced with a looming deadline.

We don’t, of course. We get bullshit. And I mean that in the most analytically rigorous Frankfurtian kind of way. But it’s bullshit nonetheless.

And the reason is that we and our students think too much and don’t work enough.

Now, I’m using a very…

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December 15, 2011, 3:00 pm

So Long, TwapperKeeper, and Thanks for All the Archives

By Mark Sample

TwapperKeeper LogoUp until last spring, we at ProfHacker often recommended TwapperKeeper as a way to archive the backchannel Twitter feed of a conference or classroom. Then in March, TwapperKeeper announced it would no longer allow the downloading of archives (though they would still be visible on the website itself). Now, we’re sad to say, TwapperKeeper is going away forever. All of it. The service will no longer archive tweets, and existing archives will disappear on January 6, 2012. The company has been bought by HootSuite and while paid HootSuite Pro customers will be able to archive tweets in a similar fashion, users of HootSuite’s free service will not have archiving privileges.

So, let’s say you captured an awesome hashtag on TwapperKeeper and forgot to download it last March when you had the chance. What can you do?

There are several tricks you can try:

  1. Martin Hawksey has created a…

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December 8, 2011, 11:00 am

ProfHacker 2011 Holiday Gift Guide

By Mark Sample

Holiday Lights!It’s the end of the fall semester and the beginning of December…That means it’s time for ProfHacker’s annual—and EPIC—holiday gift guide!

How EPIC?

EPIC enough for ALL CAPS. And more than a few exclamation points!!!

There’s sure to be something here for your loved ones, friends and neighbors, and just possibly yourself. We’ve got fun stuff, we’ve got work stuff. Gadgets, books, foodie favorites. And if you don’t see a gift idea here, take a look at our 2010 and even 2009 holiday gift guides. (more…)

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December 1, 2011, 11:00 am

Tracking Moves on the Classroom Backchannel with Storify

By Mark Sample

Person typing on a laptopI’ve previously highlighted a pedagogical framework for using Twitter in the classroom, as well as shared more practical advice for teaching with Twitter. Both of these posts came out of my early integration of Twitter in my classroom, way back in 2009. After taking a two-semester break from using Twitter in any of my courses, I’m back at it again this semester. Unlike previous semesters, when I had been using Twitter in an open-ended fashion, I have been much more focused this time around. Rather than trying to encourage the free-form dialogue I myself enjoy on Twitter, I’ve been giving my students very structured Twitter “assignments.”

For example, in October we watched Ridley Scott’s science fiction classic Blade Runner. Since I wasn’t screening the film in class, students would be watching it in all sorts of contexts: instant streaming from Netflix in the residence hall, on a…

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November 15, 2011, 11:00 am

Easy Access to Zotero PDFs with Qnotero

By Mark Sample

qnoteroIf it seems like we’ve been on a Zotero kick here on ProfHacker lately, it’s because, well, we have. Now that Zotero has an open API that developers can tap into, the Zotero ecosystem is growing in exciting ways. Today I want to introduce a small app that doesn’t require API access yet can really speed up how you use this Zotero: the free and open-source Qnotero.

Developed by Sebastiaan Mathôt, Qnotero runs in your Mac, Windows, or Linux system tray and provides lightning fast access to your Zotero references. Search by either title, name, or date, and a list of choices pops up faster than you can blink. The best part is, if there is a PDF attached to the reference, you can open that PDF in your default reader simply by clicking the PDF icon to the left of the reference. These two features—looking up references and then opening PDFs—are the only features of Qnotero, but the…

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November 8, 2011, 11:00 am

Making the Most of iAnnotate on the iPad

By Mark Sample

MarginaliaLast week Ian MacInnes weighed the pros and cons of various note-taking and PDF-annotating apps for the iPad. One of the apps Ian mentioned was iAnnotate, which Jason had previously praised on ProfHacker. Since Jason’s post covered a much earlier version of iAnnotate, I thought it’d be worthwhile to revisit this powerful PDF tool, available for just under ten bucks in the Apple App Store.

One of the features that Jason had wanted for iAnnotate back in 2010—the ability to insert images into PDFs—is now included in iAnnotate. This means, for example, if you have a JPG of your signature in your photo library, you can insert it into PDFs on the iPad, thereby “signing” the documents. You do this by adding the image to your stamp library (accessed by the big rubber stamp icon in your toolbox).

Another feature of iAnnotate that I’ve found useful is the Mail Summary option (found by…

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October 25, 2011, 11:00 am

Collecting Tweets With the TwitterPad Plug-In for WordPress

By Mark Sample

Notepad and Cup of CoffeeI’ve written frequently on ProfHacker about ways to archive Twitter posts. For your personal Twitter stream, I heartily recommended the open-source ThinkUp. But for archiving hashtags—for example, a conference backchannel or a class Twitter stream—the answer is not so clear. Former ProfHacker favorite TwapperKeeper no longer supports exporting archives, meaning it’s difficult to make use of the TwapperKeeper archives in any analytically rigorous way. Other hashtag archiving services have disappeared too, as Twitter’s API’s terms of service has grown more restrictive.

A few weeks ago I suggested that using Twitter’s hidden RSS feed was perhaps the best way to continuously grab search results, and I showed how to hack a hashtag RSS feed. Now, I want to highlight the TwitterPad plugin for WordPress, which can import a Twitter RSS feed directly into WordPress.

Developed by…

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